


Mimicry

by yonnna



Category: Durarara!!
Genre: Drabble, F/F, and weird uncanny valley attempts at replicating human features, gorey descriptions of monster makeup, i have no idea how celty's smoke works come kill me, if slumber party makeovers involved grotesque monster costumes, this is like one of those slumber party makeovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-25
Updated: 2017-03-25
Packaged: 2018-10-09 13:34:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10413336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yonnna/pseuds/yonnna
Summary: It is a simple matter to mimic monstrosity. Mimicking humanity is not so easily done. Put a mask on, put a helmet on, grow a new layer of skin. It looks almost like the real thing; almost, almost, but not quite.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I wasn’t sure how to write this, but no one else was gonna do it so I had to try. I’m only up to x5 so I’m sorry if this is horribly out of character. It isn’t as solemn as the summary suggests, I’m just bad at writing lighthearted summaries.

Beauty aspires to make itself _not_. 

Warm glow illuminates yellowing skin, tinged red where it tears like moss-eaten cloth to reveal a deeper crimson; colloidal and thick with an almost metallic shine, clotting in places and bleeding from others. Blank, colourless eyes stare into their own reflection, head hung low and limp beneath vanity lights, modest or just _heavy_. Corpse as a superstar, corpse as a leading actress, corpse as an idol; one would not think, seeing this frightening realism, _idol as a corpse_.

She will never be — idol as a corpse — or at least she will never be _this_ ; idol rotting, idol decaying, idol stripped to bones as a human is meant to. When her body dies it will die working to patch itself up; she will be dust or she will be porcelain, pristine and untarnished as in life. Nature does not allow for her to fracture without shattering, so she coats herself in a new skin, one she can cut and carve out and peel and crack to her will. It is a form of liberation. 

Beauty made so grotesque that it becomes beauty again, if only through the lens of the monster. 

A dark tendril of smoke wraps around a pale wrist and tugs tentatively where it should phase through. She drops the makeup brush. It lands on the table with a soft thud and a smear of sickly green, which almost became the discoloration of her cheek, or mould growing against white bone. 

“Sorry,” she says, looking over her shoulder. “Is it too much? I could —” 

The woman is barely more than a shadow, only the exposed skin of her neck set apart from the darkness, but Ruri has no trouble detecting the frantic wave of her hands. 

_“Wait! Don’t apologise. I wanted to say it looks cool!”_

The light of the phone screen is harsh against her face as she reads. She almost grins, one side of her lips quirking while the other remains flat. 

“You don’t find it scary?”

_“I’m fine with the undead. Ghosts, zombies, ghouls... As long as they’re from earth!”_

“I’ve never done alien makeup before,” she muses, a twinge of something resembling playfulness in her voice. “Maybe I should try that.”

_“P-Please don’t!!!!”_

Even the smoke lifting from her neck seems to shake at the suggestion, blurring the space around it as though through a veil of hot air. 

“What about an alien ghost?” she asks, narrow shoulders rising with faint laughter; the laugh does not suit her current appearance — her painted face does not shift with the one beneath, remaining grim and devoid of emotion.

_“N-No! No aliens, please.”_

“It’s okay, I was joking.” 

Shadows settle, drifting slow circles around where her head should be. There is a beat before Celty types a response. 

_“I’m glad you can laugh now.”_

The woman at the vanity table falls as silent as a true corpse. She turns face to the mirror and dabs at her neck with a light powder. There is notably less intent than before, no longer enacting a plan, but a distraction. 

Beneath the guise of bloodied lips she may laugh; beneath _that_ even she cannot say.

“Since you’re here, do you want me to do _your_ makeup?” 

She pushes herself off the vanity stool. 

_“Oh! That’s OK.”_

But she does not read the words.

“ _I’m happy just to watch._ ”

But she is already ushering for Celty to sit down in front of her. 

_“You probably can’t do much without a face to work on, anyway...”_

Ruri glances down at this message briefly, then nods, just as briefly. Celty’s fingers tap against the screen, but she jolts at the sound of a _crack_  before she can finish her sentence. 

The corpse demonstrates surprising strength for a thing so decayed, driving its hand into the neck of a mannequin like a warm knife through butter. Celty misses the action, but watches the plastic head as it slides from its mount and lands deftly in Ruri’s waiting hand. 

“It’s not a problem,” she assures, and Celty slips her phone into her pocket, silenced. 

When the mannequin head is set on her neck, the shadows shift to support it. From afar the plastic may seem to melt seamlessly into the skin beneath, but from where Ruri stands there is a thin but distinctive strip of void where the two should meet — the cracks between limbs in a ball-jointed doll. Convincingly real if one takes a sizeable step back. 

Ruri does not choose to take a sizeable step back — nor any other sort of step back. She grabs a few brushes from the table and gets to work. 

Specks of powder catch in the light, and likewise in the dark, in the billowing smoke which judders responsively — “Is that your way of sneezing?” Ruri asks, and gently stops Celty’s hand before she can retrieve her phone to answer. “Sorry, nevermind. Try to keep still.” 

The time passes in a dozen or so brushes, a pair of fake eyelashes, and far fewer minutes than Celty would have anticipated. When she is turned to her reflection, an unfamiliar face stares back. 

Were it not for the unblinking eyes, were it not for the unmoving mouth, it would not be unthinkable to consider this face human, but, in the same sense, were it not for the glint of life in the eyes of the woman stood behind her, it would not be unthinkable to consider Ruri monstrous. Neither one is here or there, bearing some uncanny quality which banishes them from the ordinary world and the extraordinary at once. 

_“It doesn’t look like my real head, but it’s —”_

Ruri, watching her type from over her shoulder, speaks to interrupt. 

“It’s not supposed to be there, is it?” she says, cupping her hands at the jawline and lifting the intricately designed head from her shoulders. “That’s fine. You’re better without it.” 

_“?”_

There is no self-deprecation in her tone, no undermining of her own handiwork, only calm observation. 

_“You don’t find me freaky without a head?”_

Ruri sets the head down on the table and pauses, pensive.

“If you can live without hiding your monstrosity, you should,” Her shoulders lift. “And if you can have a human heart without wearing a human face, that’s.. something to be proud of. It was fun to try to disguise you, but I wouldn’t want to keep you that way.”

She perches herself on the edge of the vanity and watches smoke billow in horrible dark clouds — then looks down to painted lips and curled eyelashes, and decides for herself which inspires more awe. 

“Maybe it’s freakish,” Her fingers tangle in shadow, and the shadow responds in kind. “I think that might make it beautiful.”


End file.
